What is the
significance of nature in Anthem? Why does Equality 7-2521 flee
to the forest when he is exiled from society?
Nature represents the original and uncorrupted
state of man in Anthem. Equality 7-2521 runs
to the Uncharted Forest when he is exiled from society because there
he is able to establish his freedom and start his life over as a
new man. In society, Equality 7-2521 is unable
to realize his potential because he is drawn down by the weaker
members of society, who fear his strength and try to turn it against
him. In nature, by contrast, he lives by the effort of his own hands
and mind. The forest gives him what is rightly his, which includes
all nature has to offer since man is the master and center of the
universe.
In addition to representing a chance to start over, the
forest represents a gateway into the past that society has lost
but that Equality 7-2521 seeks. In the forest,
he finds remnants of the world that disintegrated under the force
of collectivism and has now all but disappeared. When he finds his
home, he finds a key to that past, which the forest has preserved
for him against the neglect of his collectivist society. The library
provides him with information about the world that was, and, in
fact, teaches him the word “I,” which proves to be the trigger of
his epiphanic self-realization. Thus, the forest offers Equality 7-2521 a
way to go both forward by starting over on his own and back by connecting
with the ideal society that existed before.
What is the
significance of the story of the Transgressor of the Unspeakable
Word? What is the role of martyrdom in Anthem?
The Transgressor of the Unspeakable Word
and Equality 7-2521 both suffer for what
they believe in. In the case of the Transgressor of the Unspeakable
Word, he burns at the stake for professing the word “I,” the word
it is not permitted in his society to say. In the case of Equality 7-2521,
he is flogged for refusing to reveal his secret tunnel and, later,
he is exiled for seeking solitude and pursuing scientific studies.
The two are connected in two ways. First, the Transgressor of the
Unspeakable Word seeks out Equality 7-2521 while he
is being burned alive and smiles at him while he dies. Equality 7-2521 believes
this event signifies a bond between the two men. Second, though
society tortures both men physically, neither one suffers emotionally
during the torture because they are glad to suffer for their ideal.
For Rand, suffering of the body means nothing when it is endured
in the name of an ideal.
Consistent with Anthem’s status as a
political manifesto, Rand also makes reference to those she considers
martyrs in the real-life battle against the evils of collectivist
society. During his final exposition of his new philosophy, Equality 7-2521 addresses
all the martyrs of the transition period, those who died for individualism
while the world was just being converted to collectivism. These
people are stand-ins for Rand’s contemporaries, and the whole novella
is meant as a way of reaching out to them and telling them that
even though they suffer, they do so for an ideal that is worth suffering
for and that will never die.
What is the
setting of Anthem? Why does Rand not specify the
story’s time or location?
Strictly speaking, the setting of Anthem is
unclear. Rand reveals that it has been many years since the fall
of the novella’s society to collectivist ideals, but we do not know
how many years. Moreover, it has been few enough years that the
clothes in the closet at Equality 7-2521’s
new home in the forest are still intact. Similarly, the city in which
the first part of the action occurs is unnamed, and the location of
the Uncharted Forest is likewise unspecified. Rand employs this vagueness
to make Anthem universal. She wants the novella
to be a warning to all people everywhere that collectivism is an
evil perpetrated on the human race, and that wherever it is implemented,
it will bring about the demise of men. By not naming the city or
the time, she leaves open the questions of where and how and when
the collapse she foresees will happen.
In addition to the setting’s vagueness making Anthem a
sort of every-place warning, it also distances Rand from Soviet
Russia in meaningful ways. Though details of the story unquestionably
refer to the conditions in Russia under Lenin and Stalin, Rand is
careful not to make Anthem explicitly about Russia
because she wants to be clear that the evil of collectivism is not
related only to the corruption of particular leaders and their henchmen.
In this way, she answers the criticism of those who believe that
Communism failed in Russia only because of specific historical conditions
such as the cruelty of Stalin. Thus, the vagueness of the setting
results in a deeper criticism of socialism than Rand could have
achieved by making the story a concrete critique of a specific example
of communism.
